Reclaiming & Feri: Iron & Pearl
I took my first steps into Reclaiming and Anderson Feri in big ways in October 2010… and it happened while I was spending time in the San Francisco Bay Area for a couple of weeks on my first 11-week trip through the US. I knew of Reclaiming and Feri and I had certainly read books authored by Starhawk and met Reclaiming witches in Australia a year or so earlier (I was quite surprised there were Reclaiming witches in Australia) at the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Meeting Reclaiming and Feri in the Bay at Samhain was a potent catalyst for my own witchcraft journey.
Previous to stepping into Reclaiming and Feri I was and still am an initiate of the Wildwood Tradition of Witchcraft, an Australian-born Tradition of Witchcraft emerging from threads of folkloric witchcraft, spirit-contact, bioregional animism, family magic, and ecstatic process, consolidated by cross-pollination and deep intimacy with other witches, covens, and traditions. I helped to found its first Coven in Yuggera and Turrbal Country and have been a witness and midwife ever since. It has been my deep joy and pleasure – mixed with awe and holy dread – to help to mentor and initiate others into the Tradition. I already felt competent in many magical skills that Reclaiming trains people in, I was already engaged in visible leadership and community-work back home in Australia, and had even been selected to be a student-teacher at the first Australian Reclaiming WitchCamp (Easter, 2011).
In some ways I was thrust souls-first into Reclaiming leadership, luckily I was caught by humans and spirits, and caught myself too somewhere in there, and in a labyrinthine way figured my way back through the more proper “steps” (meetings, public rituals, more mentorship, core classes, one to one conversations, helping to birth and organise a WitchCamp) and even underwent Reclaiming initiation after a three-year process in September, 2016. Ten years feels like not so long ago. It is also true that a whole decade has passed in which I have been married, separated, initiated into three other witchcraft traditions, initiated quite a few people into Wildwood, written and published books, entered and dissolved several romantic relationships, moved countries and states, let go of so much, welcomed so much –
With that more visible and more public Reclaiming work – many of us think of Reclaiming as a community-oriented/anchored tradition – I was simultaneously a formal student of Anderson Feri. By formal student I mean I was reciprocally engaged with an initiate of the Tradition and being trained in the arts and lore of Feri. My first teacher was Storm Faerywolf, who is a well-known and now published teacher and initiate of Feri. I then studied with someone who identifed as Old Faery and underwent certain significant rites of passage with this witch. This was never my consciously-intended path through Anderson Feri, but it was certainly what was fated for me, to be witness to and feel into various cultures and lineages that have descended from the Andersons and to find my way to my eventual initiators who are, like me, active in both Reclaiming and Anderson Feri. I ultimately was initiated on the 4th of July, 2018, in Somerset, Britain. I spent the day of my initiation on Glastonbury Tor. What more could I have asked for?
Some of my elders, even some of my Reclaiming initiators, understand and experience Reclaiming as an “off-shoot” or “sub-trad” of Feri. I see that this is true. My Anderson Feri initiators would both probably agree that they are distinct traditions. I see that this is true. Feri witches, and indeed hopefully all witches, are completely at home in Paradox. Certainly Reclaiming has Feri roots. In Reclaiming we work with the three souls, we work with wild currents of ecstatic magic, the Iron and Pearl Pentacles, some of our cosmology, ritual forms, stories, ideas come out of Feri Witchcraft. Some of the innovations and styles of working within Reclaiming have then gone on to affect and influence various streams of Anderson Feri. And certainly, there is initiation in Reclaiming and an initiatory lineage of Feri flow through Reclaiming (it used to be called 2nd Initiation), but neither the formal Reclaiming nor Feri initiations are required to fully participate in the Reclaiming Tradition of Witchcraft. Reclaiming is after all grounded in anarchistic and feminist principles of organisation and communication.
Feri is a Tradition that has strange roots. It is American Traditional Witchcraft. Yes, it draws inspiration and folklore and folk practice from British, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Italian culture and sorcery. And because it is American, it also draws inspiration and influence from the West African spirit-working traditions, Hawaiian culture, Southern Conjure and Hoodoo (also highly syncretic and of various expressions), Native American peoples, and even New England folklore and legend. Feri IS an initiatory, mystery Tradition. One can only fully engage it as an initiated member. This initiation is one (there are no degrees) and it is secret, private and varies in how long it takes or how it happens, but the core – and we have an integral core – is always passed. As in other initiatory traditions we at times need to figure out who came from who, but we get there in the end. This is one important way that Feri contrasts from Reclaiming.
At times I have felt that Feri is more Iron and Reclaiming is more Pearl, at least initially I thought and felt that. Sometimes that still seems true and perhaps some of the critiques of either Tradition could be contextualised by such a view. At other times this is reductive and unnecessarily dichotomous. Except that… Iron and Pearl are the same Pentagram.
Iron is Sex, Self, Passion, Pride, Power (around the points in the original order).
Pearl is Love, Wisdom, Knowledge, Law, Power/Liberty (around the points in the original order).
This is how Victor passes these Pentagrams. Later on they began to be referred to as Pentacles as well and some of the Points in the Pearl changed around (notably Wisdom and Knowledge) and Power began to also be called Liberty. Interestingly, it seems that Liberty as a Point turns up in Reclaiming more than other lineages or offshoots of Feri.
One of my initiators, involved in Reclaiming and Feri, was in a coven that used to visit with the Andersons and listen and learn. When asked about the order of the Points of the Pearl Pentacle, Victor apparently replied, “It goes Love, then Wisdom, then Knowledge, then Law, then Liberty.” Then again, Victor said different things to different people at different times. And it is important to note that Victor was also very consistent with several things also.
For me the style and ethos of Feri magic is intrinsically about purification, alignment, practical knowledge of one’s Divine nature, and the unravelling and cleansing of complexes so that we become stronger and more ourselves in this and other worlds. For me the style and ethos of Reclaiming magic is intrinsically about empowerment, groundedness, effective and bold trance-work, and justice, creating and conjuring new and deeper visions and dreams for the world we live in. I can’t have one without the other, I also need both. I am also not saying that Feri is not about empowerment and groundedness, or that I don’t feed alignment and the cleansing of complexes in Reclaiming, because I do! And I have heard time and again from all kinds of people, across the “divide”, that Feri feels more sorcerous and mystical and Reclaiming feels more grounded and political. I just gotta say though that some of the most politically-engaged witches I know working for justice are Feri initiates and some of the most mystical people I have ever met are Reclaiming, so…
It seems to me that the points of the Iron Pentacle helpfully describe the Feri Witch. We work with the erotic life-force in deeply intimate ways, knowing that all is formed of God Herself’s holy lust. In this we discover the nature of who we are, who can become, and this drives us – passionately! – to stand as ourselves, to exclaim “I claim my birthright as a child of the Goddess”. In so doing I realise my Power, I become powerful and know myself as Witch, as World-Changer, as Lover of the Spirits.
It seems to me that the points of the Pearl Pentacle helpfully describe the Reclaiming Witch. Our contentious at times Reclaiming Principles of Unity literally begins with Love – “My law is love unto all beings…” from the Wiccan Charge of the Goddess – and we are deeply seeking the wisdom of ourselves, each other, this Earth, and the infinite beings of the multiverse. We desire to empower others to trust their own innate wisdom and discover Knowledge, that each of us is a Body of Knowledge, has something to share, offer, teach, and express. Our Tradition has deep conversations regarding Law – natural law, human law, magical law – and we go deep and long with those conversations and inquiries. And ultimately we are interested in the liberation of all beings from oppression and worlds that enshrine personal AND collective liberties, knowing they are interdependent upon each other.
Now please read these back and swap Feri and Reclaiming around, because that is just as true and just as honest.
I am active in both of these Traditions, and within Wildwood Witchcraft, and within the World/s. I have struggled deeply with both Traditions and quite nearly walked completely away from them. I am still here and deeply thankful to my mentors, teachers, spirits, and initiators for the immense gifts and challenges of Reclaiming and Feri.
And as my beloved oathmother says, “I only run one Pentacle and sometimes it becomes Pearl.”
Let us hope that Love – Wisdom – Knowledge – Law – and the Power that liberates us all will manifest more and more all the time. x
